Why are regional unemployment differentials in Europe so persistent if, as the wage curve literature demonstrates, there is no compensation in labour markets? We hypothesize that workers in high-unemployment regions are compensated in housing markets. Modelling regional unemployment...

The paper presents a polycentric general equilibrium model with congestion externalities and distortionary labor taxation calibrated to fit the key empirical regularities of the regional economy and transport system of Randstad conglomeration. In line with more stylized models, marginal external...

This paper replicates Costa and Kahn's analysis of locational choices of couples of highly educated persons for the Netherlands. We find increasing concentration of such power couples in the urbanized western part of the country. This trend occurs in spite of the absence of an urban wage premium...

Unemployment rates appear to vary widely at a subregional (e.g., local or provincial) level. Using spatial econometric models for spatial autocorrelation, this paper focuses attention on the spatial structure of regional unemployment disparities of Italian provinces. On the basis of findings...

Why has job growth over the past decades been weaker in the Dutch Randstad area than in surrounding regions? In a simultaneous equations analysis, we find that employment adjusts to the regional supply of labour. Net internal migration is predominantly determined by regional housing supply and...

We hypothesize, and test for, a negative effect of the length of the commute on worker’s productivity, by examining whether the commute has a positive effect on worker’s absenteeism. Our estimates for Germany indicate that commuting distance induces absenteeism with an elasticity of about...

A burgeoning literature has emerged during the last two decades to assess the economic impacts of immigration on host countries. In recent years much research has been at the national level under the assumption that impacts in open regions may dissipate through adjustment processes such as...

There is an increasing awareness of the potential of nonlinear modeling in regional science, which can partly be explained by the recognition of the limitations of conventional equilibrium models in complex situationsand partly by the easy availability and accessibility of sophisticated...

In this paper I argue that search theory is a useful addition to the way economists and geographers have approached the study of commuting behavior. This is illustrated by showing that introduction of a spatial element into the standard model of job search leads to the prediction of critical...

Most "wage curve" studies treat local labour markets as independent "islands" in the national economy. However, when a local labour market is in close proximity of other labour markets, a local shock that increases unemployment may not lead to lower pay rates if employers fear outward migration...